Friday, January 23, 2015

My entry into the Blogisphere occurred 1 year ago today with the labor and delivery of my first blog! So Happy Blogiversary to me!

I want to thank each of you for taking the time to read each blog and sometimes leaving comments. It has been quite an adventure, and I'm glad you all traveled this journey with me.

Some blogs were written with tears; others took on a life of their own. Some stories made the long trip back through memory lane; others were full of more information than you ever wanted to know about melanoma and tanning. I have shared stories that, until that blog, had been held close to my heart and never shared before. You have also seen my sometimes quirky sense of humor and my usual snarky sarcasm. I've earned search key words that I can't print here because they are pornographic in nature; I have gathered readers from all over the world, especially South Africa.

There are many more blogs waiting to be told, but for now, every ounce of my time and energy is being squeezed into getting my newest Facebook page,Pull the Plug on Tanning Beds, up andrunning. I realized a void in the Facebook groups. There are groups for skin cancer or melanoma in general, for support, for sun safety, for remembrance, for advocacy, for combinations of all aspects of melanoma ... but nothing specifically and solely addressing the dangers of tanning beds.

So Pull the Plug was born, and January, the beginning of the teen indoor tanning season, was designated as Tanning Bed Dangers Awareness Month. My goal was to blanket the social media with information about the risks of using these death beds ... and I think, thanks to its more than 1,300 members and growing, we have accomplished that goal and more.

Along with spreading awareness, we have been contacting colleges and universities about tanning beds on and off their campuses and about making risky behavior more convenient to their students by including tanning salons in their cash card programs. We have battled with tanning salons and their false advertising on Facebook. We are contacting fitness centers about including free cancer with their membership by having tanning beds. And much, much more.

All this will continue beyond January ... actually, until either I or tanning beds are obsolete! So if you haven't joined us yet on Pull the Plug and you care about the damage being done by these cancer machines, please consider this your invite.But back to the celebration for now! One year of blogs behind me and a new blank page just waiting to be filled. I hope you enjoyed reading my blogs and took something good away ... more information, a different point of view, a smile, an understanding ... and I hope you will continue to follow me. Thank you again!